Girls exist on the internet. It's just that most of their existance is based around whining (like this lousy Escapist article... why they keep showing up on Slashdot, I don't know...). Girls don't exist on the internet..? Then how do you explain Friendster, Makeoutclub, Livejournal, Deadjournal, eBay, suicidegirls and the other countless sites that consist of nothing but pathetic chicks rambling on about every single miniscule event in their life and whining about highschool-style romances and betrayals and jealousy? Not to mention all of the slutty chicks trolling for male attention online.
Girls on the internet are about as relevant (to me, at least) as girls on Jupiter. Who wants a chick that spends all of her time parked in a chair porking-out while surfing the internet all night long? Same thing I don't get about guys who want girls who are into gaming.... Why? If I want someone to game with, there are other dudes. The last thing I want is some chick that I'll never see because she'll always be online or arguing with me about who's turn it is to do something on line or spending all of our time instant messaging each other even though we're six feet apart in the same room.
I prefer chicks who don't even know what this "internet" thing is. And the ones who do, I just pretend they're guys in the first place.
I've never really understood the whole complaint about control of the internet. If France or Germany or the UK or anyone else wants to run things, they can make their own network/internet. The US has 'control' because the US developed it. It may be used globally today, but that in no way obligates the country that originated it to hand it over to anyone.
And personally, I don't care either way. As long as it remains reliable and uncensored, it means very little.
Wow. I don't think any blurb has made me less interested in the link/article in the headline ever as much as this one. Blogs? Baseball? Wall Street Journal?
This shit belongs in Web 2.0 or whatever one of those droll braindead "business" IT magazines are - not here.
Anyone can be large breasted if they're fat enough.
Besides, anyone who has ever dealt with romanians at a garage sale knows that by the time you leave, they'll have talked you down to taking only a dozen beers.
If they are truly sure, then they should put their genitals on the line.
You've misunderstood the point.
Randi isn't putting up the money because he's so sure none of these things exists. He's putting it up because he's so sure that those who claim to have special powers or insight are never able or willing to back it up. You may be surprised that most of those who are the fiercest skeptics are the same ones who most want the claims to be real.
I think the amount is well over one million dollars at the Randi foundation right now. All someone has to do is just . . . do what they say they can. No smoke or mirrors. Controlled scientific tests where you prove you can do what you say to the rest of the world and never deal with being called a fake again. Not bad, huh? Oh - and get rich in the process.
And what do the "skeptics" get out of it? Fuck, a million bucks to find and document the proof of some paranormal ability... how amazing would that be? Do you seriously think Randi would be all bummed if someone took him up on his offer and passed with flying colors? Hell no. I gaurantee that would be the best day of his entire life - and it would change the world.
Apparently they can arbitrarily set rules and conditions for the preliminary test which most people refuse for some reason.
Yes. And that reason is that they know they'll be proven to be a fraud. Those paranormal dorks only want to perform on their own terms under their own controlled conditions. Never anything scientific. Hey, if you can levitate, do it. Show the world. Show Randi and get rich.
But nah, the Silvia Brown's and Uri Gellars of the world would much rather indulge in fame and fortune on such enlightened outlets such as the Art Bell show and Montel Williams.
If someone could prove to me under controlled scientific conditions that any of these paranormal claims (ghosts, aliens, levitation, ESP, etc) are absolutely real, I'd cut off my left nut and donate 50% of my salary to charity for the rest of my entire life.
But the fact is, nobody ever wants controlled expiriments, because they can't cheat. I mean . . . DUH. And what's hilarious is the same people who are rational enough to call out creationists and other nuts have no problem indulging in little green men, caspers and David Blaine.
Yep. And now she plays the Detective / Captain on The Shield.
Man, the TV version of Where In The World was just so awful. It just made me want to crawl through my television so I could beat all of the idiot children to death.
Oh.. and don't forget, they had the house-band Rockapella . . Hah! Oh god the 90s were horrible.
Evolution is hardly "shakey". It's a well-tested theory with plenty of supporting evidence. And whether or not it is "truth", it is still a theory which has undergone and continues to undergo the scrutiny and expansion provided by thorough action aligned with the scientific method. That's why it shoudl be taught in science class. Creationism has no tested anything and is the opposite of evolution. That is, it's based on simply believing (since there's no way to test any hypothesis originating from creation myhthology).
And most rational people don't want "god in schools". School is school. Church is church. If you need god so much, go pray in a chapel. I don't go to your church to learn chemistry for fuck's sake.
Science shouldn't have any creationism thrown into it. Save that for theology studies. I don't come into your bible study groups and try to reason with you as to rational explanations for silly things in your book of fables, do I?
The statement is perfectly reasonable - they just should have used the word theological rather than idealogical.
Please tell me you're still going through the school system? Evolution is exactly the fucking opposite of the monkeys and typewriters "argument". Evolution is not at all random. In evolution, the most successful traits and habits of a creature remain and are pushed to the next generation and improved upon while those which are useless tend to fade out.
Monkeys and typewriters are random and have nothing to do with anything.
And it's silly that you use the argument of "we can't explain it yet, so it must be god!". Come on. Seriously. Read a book or something.
Science is about hypotheses and theories. Creationism is about theology/mythology. Stop trying to turn one into the other and go back to your Sunday school.
A coworker of mine got the ergonomics group at our corporation to buy him a $150 mouse. It looks like a frigging boat.
I used to get RSI, but you know what I did? I stopped doing such repetative tasks non-stop. I suppose there are extreme cases, but I got to the point where I would have to wrap ice around my wrist and forearm and then a towel around that and then rest it on the desk and only gingerly move my hands to use the mouse. It was incredibly painful.
It's been almsot a decade since I've had that kind of pain, because I get up and go do more things in between. It doesn't mean you have to use the mouse for an hour and then take a ten hour break - just mix things up a bit. Go for a drink of water. Hit the vending machine. Take a leak. Say "hi" to a coworker. Make a phone call. Whatever strikes you. Then get back to things.
No, I posted from OSX, genius. I suppose I could have posted from my Sunblade (or my Sunray, for that matter), but that still isn't a PC and certainly none of these is a PC for gaming.
Yeah... not like Software ("Virus") Pipeline was doing this fifteen years ago. Or Hacker Cat or any other small computer store or mini-chain. Hell, I still remember the local Software Pipeline in Portland having Amigas on display that you could play games on (and they rented software for it, too).
PC gaming hasn't gone anywhere. It's always been popular. Consoles get more advertising to the masses, but so what?
People who act like one day of school is the difference between a career and a job make me laugh. Clearly those are people who haven't attended school in many decades. Trust me, one more day of "shut up and be quiet so teacher can recover from her hangover" is not going to help anything.
Besides, I don't know about anyone else, but I could only take so many consecutive days of teacher's tender loving fingers before I needed a day or two break from him.
If you want me to be a customer, you need to offer me several things:
+ I don't want to view it just on my ipod.
+ I don't want to be able to view it only with Quicktime.
+ I don't want to have severe DRM limits that hamper my ability to store and watch the content any time I want on any device I want.
+ I don't want to pay through the nose for the content.
+ If I watch it on a non-iPod device, I want higher quality downloads available.
+ You should have at least the selection that Netflix does. Even if you're just the "Netflix of television".
I'm one of those consumers who is not opposed to paying for information/entertainment/data on any real basis other than I want it to be affordable and flexible. Don't place silly restrictions on me that hamper my enjoyment and don't charge me so much that I have to seriously think if each download is worth it.
Also, isn't most of the content they're talking about already public domain? Hell, some of it can be downloaded from the Internet Archive already.
Exactly. Needing an internet connection would be a deal breaker for me. I have net access from everywhere I compute, but that doesn't mean I always will into the future. If I want to pop out the powerbook while at a park or sitting at a restaurant for a few minutes to check something, I shouldn't require net access. Not to mention, a lot of people outside of the United States have metered net accounts.
Just last week, Slashdot was posting articles about the demise of PC gaming.
PC gaming is neither demising or making a comeback. It's as popular as it has ever been. More people own more computers than ever before and more people are gaming on them than ever before. There are a lot of gaming experiences you simply can't get off another instrument.
I'm not deeply opposed to the concept of subscriptions. Disregarding operating systems for a second (I'm an OSX, Linux, Solaris guy), I think that people will have to wrap their mind around the new concept. We are used to paying for an item and owning it rather than paying for the function and service performed. If the price is reasonable . . . why the hell not?
Forgetting that OpenOffice is free, let's say you had the option of paying $350 for each copy of each release of your office software (word processor and spreadsheet program) every couple of years or so. Why not pay $5/mo for the same functionality and never have to worry about upgrades or new releases? Same with games and everything else. Why should software be so different than any other delivered service?
My main concerns would be:
+ What if the service stops being offered or the company goes out of business?
+ What are the security and privacy ramifications?
+ What are my options if I don't want to use a net connection?
+ What will happen to my documents/material when I stop subscribing to the software?
+ Will others have to subscribe to the software service to make use of the content/items I made?
+ Will I be forced into using an "application server" style arrangement or will I still be able to download and install the fully functional software on my actual computer? I don't want to be tethered to the internet for all functionality.
+ Will you charge me per-seat/user even in a household? Or can I still just have one subscription and let everyone who comes to my house or lives with me use my software as if it were not a subscription? I don't want to have to pay $20/mo for four people in my home to access something when I could just buy the software and they could use it for "free" without additional costs.
+ Am I going to have to allow a credit check and offer up my credit card number, social security number, home address, full name and other private data to secure an account with the software subscription service? Won't this make me easy to track in relation to anything I ever read, access, view or create/author? Do I really want this?
Slashdot Mirror
Girls exist on the internet. It's just that most of their existance is based around whining (like this lousy Escapist article... why they keep showing up on Slashdot, I don't know...). Girls don't exist on the internet..? Then how do you explain Friendster, Makeoutclub, Livejournal, Deadjournal, eBay, suicidegirls and the other countless sites that consist of nothing but pathetic chicks rambling on about every single miniscule event in their life and whining about highschool-style romances and betrayals and jealousy? Not to mention all of the slutty chicks trolling for male attention online.
Girls on the internet are about as relevant (to me, at least) as girls on Jupiter. Who wants a chick that spends all of her time parked in a chair porking-out while surfing the internet all night long? Same thing I don't get about guys who want girls who are into gaming.... Why? If I want someone to game with, there are other dudes. The last thing I want is some chick that I'll never see because she'll always be online or arguing with me about who's turn it is to do something on line or spending all of our time instant messaging each other even though we're six feet apart in the same room.
I prefer chicks who don't even know what this "internet" thing is. And the ones who do, I just pretend they're guys in the first place.
I've never really understood the whole complaint about control of the internet. If France or Germany or the UK or anyone else wants to run things, they can make their own network/internet. The US has 'control' because the US developed it. It may be used globally today, but that in no way obligates the country that originated it to hand it over to anyone.
And personally, I don't care either way. As long as it remains reliable and uncensored, it means very little.
Wow. I don't think any blurb has made me less interested in the link/article in the headline ever as much as this one. Blogs? Baseball? Wall Street Journal?
This shit belongs in Web 2.0 or whatever one of those droll braindead "business" IT magazines are - not here.
Maybe the skirts were living aliens that were just wearing women?
90% water? What the hell is the other 10%?
The typical american beer has no more than about 5% alcohol. I don't think it can be called beer if it's higher than 5.5%.
Anyone can be large breasted if they're fat enough.
Besides, anyone who has ever dealt with romanians at a garage sale knows that by the time you leave, they'll have talked you down to taking only a dozen beers.
If they are truly sure, then they should put their genitals on the line.
You've misunderstood the point.
Randi isn't putting up the money because he's so sure none of these things exists. He's putting it up because he's so sure that those who claim to have special powers or insight are never able or willing to back it up. You may be surprised that most of those who are the fiercest skeptics are the same ones who most want the claims to be real.
I think the amount is well over one million dollars at the Randi foundation right now. All someone has to do is just . . . do what they say they can. No smoke or mirrors. Controlled scientific tests where you prove you can do what you say to the rest of the world and never deal with being called a fake again. Not bad, huh? Oh - and get rich in the process.
And what do the "skeptics" get out of it? Fuck, a million bucks to find and document the proof of some paranormal ability... how amazing would that be? Do you seriously think Randi would be all bummed if someone took him up on his offer and passed with flying colors? Hell no. I gaurantee that would be the best day of his entire life - and it would change the world.
Apparently they can arbitrarily set rules and conditions for the preliminary test which most people refuse for some reason.
Yes. And that reason is that they know they'll be proven to be a fraud. Those paranormal dorks only want to perform on their own terms under their own controlled conditions. Never anything scientific. Hey, if you can levitate, do it. Show the world. Show Randi and get rich.
But nah, the Silvia Brown's and Uri Gellars of the world would much rather indulge in fame and fortune on such enlightened outlets such as the Art Bell show and Montel Williams.
If someone could prove to me under controlled scientific conditions that any of these paranormal claims (ghosts, aliens, levitation, ESP, etc) are absolutely real, I'd cut off my left nut and donate 50% of my salary to charity for the rest of my entire life.
But the fact is, nobody ever wants controlled expiriments, because they can't cheat. I mean . . . DUH. And what's hilarious is the same people who are rational enough to call out creationists and other nuts have no problem indulging in little green men, caspers and David Blaine.
Yep. And now she plays the Detective / Captain on The Shield.
Man, the TV version of Where In The World was just so awful. It just made me want to crawl through my television so I could beat all of the idiot children to death.
Oh.. and don't forget, they had the house-band Rockapella . . Hah! Oh god the 90s were horrible.
Evolution is hardly "shakey". It's a well-tested theory with plenty of supporting evidence. And whether or not it is "truth", it is still a theory which has undergone and continues to undergo the scrutiny and expansion provided by thorough action aligned with the scientific method. That's why it shoudl be taught in science class. Creationism has no tested anything and is the opposite of evolution. That is, it's based on simply believing (since there's no way to test any hypothesis originating from creation myhthology).
And most rational people don't want "god in schools". School is school. Church is church. If you need god so much, go pray in a chapel. I don't go to your church to learn chemistry for fuck's sake.
"Paranormal investigator".
Is that the backup choice if the application as 7-11 clerk is turned down?
Where does CCH Pounder fit into all of this?
(Obscure...?)
Science shouldn't have any creationism thrown into it. Save that for theology studies. I don't come into your bible study groups and try to reason with you as to rational explanations for silly things in your book of fables, do I?
The statement is perfectly reasonable - they just should have used the word theological rather than idealogical.
You can't help your race or sex. Believing in idiotic mythologies is entirely elective.
Please tell me you're still going through the school system? Evolution is exactly the fucking opposite of the monkeys and typewriters "argument". Evolution is not at all random. In evolution, the most successful traits and habits of a creature remain and are pushed to the next generation and improved upon while those which are useless tend to fade out.
Monkeys and typewriters are random and have nothing to do with anything.
And it's silly that you use the argument of "we can't explain it yet, so it must be god!". Come on. Seriously. Read a book or something.
Science is about hypotheses and theories. Creationism is about theology/mythology. Stop trying to turn one into the other and go back to your Sunday school.
A coworker of mine got the ergonomics group at our corporation to buy him a $150 mouse. It looks like a frigging boat.
I used to get RSI, but you know what I did? I stopped doing such repetative tasks non-stop. I suppose there are extreme cases, but I got to the point where I would have to wrap ice around my wrist and forearm and then a towel around that and then rest it on the desk and only gingerly move my hands to use the mouse. It was incredibly painful.
It's been almsot a decade since I've had that kind of pain, because I get up and go do more things in between. It doesn't mean you have to use the mouse for an hour and then take a ten hour break - just mix things up a bit. Go for a drink of water. Hit the vending machine. Take a leak. Say "hi" to a coworker. Make a phone call. Whatever strikes you. Then get back to things.
No, I posted from OSX, genius. I suppose I could have posted from my Sunblade (or my Sunray, for that matter), but that still isn't a PC and certainly none of these is a PC for gaming.
Expand yourself a little bit.
Yeah... not like Software ("Virus") Pipeline was doing this fifteen years ago. Or Hacker Cat or any other small computer store or mini-chain. Hell, I still remember the local Software Pipeline in Portland having Amigas on display that you could play games on (and they rented software for it, too).
PC gaming hasn't gone anywhere. It's always been popular. Consoles get more advertising to the masses, but so what?
Have you seen the bargain DVD rack at your local Wal-Mart?
No, I've never actually been inside of a Wal-Mart.
However, even at bargain bin prices, it's not worth it. $5+ for a movie that's 20, 30, 40, 50 or even 60+ years old is not worth it.
People who act like one day of school is the difference between a career and a job make me laugh. Clearly those are people who haven't attended school in many decades. Trust me, one more day of "shut up and be quiet so teacher can recover from her hangover" is not going to help anything.
Besides, I don't know about anyone else, but I could only take so many consecutive days of teacher's tender loving fingers before I needed a day or two break from him.
If you want me to be a customer, you need to offer me several things:
+ I don't want to view it just on my ipod.
+ I don't want to be able to view it only with Quicktime.
+ I don't want to have severe DRM limits that hamper my ability to store and watch the content any time I want on any device I want.
+ I don't want to pay through the nose for the content.
+ If I watch it on a non-iPod device, I want higher quality downloads available.
+ You should have at least the selection that Netflix does. Even if you're just the "Netflix of television".
I'm one of those consumers who is not opposed to paying for information/entertainment/data on any real basis other than I want it to be affordable and flexible. Don't place silly restrictions on me that hamper my enjoyment and don't charge me so much that I have to seriously think if each download is worth it.
Also, isn't most of the content they're talking about already public domain? Hell, some of it can be downloaded from the Internet Archive already.
Exactly. Needing an internet connection would be a deal breaker for me. I have net access from everywhere I compute, but that doesn't mean I always will into the future. If I want to pop out the powerbook while at a park or sitting at a restaurant for a few minutes to check something, I shouldn't require net access. Not to mention, a lot of people outside of the United States have metered net accounts.
Just last week, Slashdot was posting articles about the demise of PC gaming.
PC gaming is neither demising or making a comeback. It's as popular as it has ever been. More people own more computers than ever before and more people are gaming on them than ever before. There are a lot of gaming experiences you simply can't get off another instrument.
I'm not deeply opposed to the concept of subscriptions. Disregarding operating systems for a second (I'm an OSX, Linux, Solaris guy), I think that people will have to wrap their mind around the new concept. We are used to paying for an item and owning it rather than paying for the function and service performed. If the price is reasonable . . . why the hell not?
Forgetting that OpenOffice is free, let's say you had the option of paying $350 for each copy of each release of your office software (word processor and spreadsheet program) every couple of years or so. Why not pay $5/mo for the same functionality and never have to worry about upgrades or new releases? Same with games and everything else. Why should software be so different than any other delivered service?
My main concerns would be:
+ What if the service stops being offered or the company goes out of business?
+ What are the security and privacy ramifications?
+ What are my options if I don't want to use a net connection?
+ What will happen to my documents/material when I stop subscribing to the software?
+ Will others have to subscribe to the software service to make use of the content/items I made?
+ Will I be forced into using an "application server" style arrangement or will I still be able to download and install the fully functional software on my actual computer? I don't want to be tethered to the internet for all functionality.
+ Will you charge me per-seat/user even in a household? Or can I still just have one subscription and let everyone who comes to my house or lives with me use my software as if it were not a subscription? I don't want to have to pay $20/mo for four people in my home to access something when I could just buy the software and they could use it for "free" without additional costs.
+ Am I going to have to allow a credit check and offer up my credit card number, social security number, home address, full name and other private data to secure an account with the software subscription service? Won't this make me easy to track in relation to anything I ever read, access, view or create/author? Do I really want this?